April 8, 2014

Keyboard Shortcuts for special characters /Symbols

This page will show users (of the Windows or Macintosh OS X operating systems), having a western european “standard” keyboard (showing the latin alphabet), how to generate other characters they might not see on the keyboard.

How to use this chart
You can use the html name or number codes in an HTML document (i.e. a webpage or an e-mail that uses HTML format.)
For Macintosh: press the keys as shown. for example “shift+option+w” means press down the shift key, the option key, and the w key all at the same time. “option+e E” means press down the option key and the e key at the same time, then press the E key (capital E).

Special characters on Macintosh (Apple keyboards)
On MacOS, the option key functions as a modifier key like the shift key. Hold it down and press another key simultaneously. For shift+option, hold down both the shift and option keys and press the additional letter key simultaneously.

To type a special character, using an Alt keyboard sequence:
Ensure that the Num Lock key has been pressed, to activate the numeric key section of the keyboard.
Press the Alt key, and hold it down.
While the Alt key is pressed, type the sequence of numbers (on the numeric keypad) from the Alt code in the above table.
Release the Alt key, and the character will appear.
There are some gaps in the numerical sequence of Alt character codes, because either those elements do not exist, or they are duplicates of elements listed elsewhere.
†Some word processing programs will not recognize these Alt functions.
‡Many fonts improperly display Alt 166 as ª rather than , and Alt 167 as º rather than .